Given my personal experience with addiction and plethora of pharmacological and health-related knowledge, I was really looking forward to mansplaning to yall about addiction and society and all that shit. You know me, I am a full on, hardcore misanthrope (one who despises humans despite being one). Always have been even as a kid. Anyway, I have some ideas about addiction that I feel get little-to-no attention in the media (once I share you'll realize why very quickly), the political arena (again, once I share it'll become obvious why), and even the research community.
First off--and this is really fucking important--society has been inadvertently built to create addicts. That's right, our society fosters addiction and addictive behavior among the general population like an alcoholic nursing a hangover for 30 years straight. This seems to be relatively consistent regardless of what economic system a country maintains (e.g., capitalism vs communism), albeit for very different reasons.
Second, human nature and our social norms constantly reinforce addiction and provide a ridiculously overwhelming number of opportunities for people to become addicts starting at age 0. Parents are big players (or dare I say, offenders) here for the first several years of a child's life, then school and society plays a larger role.
Third, our medical system is HUGELY to blame for addiction, at least definitely in the US.
As far as my assertion on society, I am going to break it down into two sub-types by economic structure.
1. Capitalism: Capitalism plays a massive role in addiction. Now, I am a capitalist myself (I mean, hell, I am a landlord and own a fairly successful small business and work a high paying job in IT). However, capitalism in western society, especially in the US and UK (probably in most of the EU too, I just am not as familiar with their politics) has run completely out of control. People are constantly bombarded with advertisements, new products, planned obsolescence; access to pornography; more and more addictive foods and products/apps, and the lobbying power of the offending companies is such that I see zero chance of this going away anytime soon. There are literally people who play the role of "monetization expert" or "head of monetization" at various companies, and their entire job is to make products as addictive as possible. Basically, our entire society is built around hedonic pleasures.
I don't want to go into too much of the minutia because I will end up writing a 10,000 word essay, but suffice to say that capitalism provides both intense temptation as well as a sense of competition between individuals ("Oh you only have a Honda, I have a BMW!") that people feel constantly pressured to appear rich. Everyone wants to be rich, but usually for the wrong reasons. People constantly want the newest iPhone, the newest car, the most expensive house they can barely afford. We have constant instant gratification simply by going on Amazon or Walmart and ordering something then having it on our doorstep a day or 2 later. Capitalism encourages excess, and excess is a form of addiction. People are addicted to buying new shit, as you get a dopamine rush/reward in your brain when you buy stuff. People are addicted to hoarding money, which explains the wealth gap. Nobody truly deserves a billion dollars and most of the people who have billions of dollars are fairly shitty people. Yes, they worked very hard, they they have a skillset that is rare and hard to replace, and yes, they definitely earned their money because the system is flawed and doesn't tax wealth properly. But they didn't work any harder than the single parent working 3 jobs to be able to pay rent and afford shitty health insurance and feed their kids. Or the person busting their ass 6 or 7 days a week, but still has to choose between going to the dentist or going to the doctor.
Capitalism encourages and reinforces shitty morals and values. It makes people's mindset all about ME ME ME and the things I can buy and how much money I have and how to look rich and snazzy so I can impress strangers when I drive my fancy car around. It's bullshit. It discourages thinking about US as a species, it discourages thinking about the planet and the health of the environment we live in. Well, when people are obsessed with ME ME ME and material possessions, they will be perpetually disappointed and constantly chasing a high they'll never achieve: contentment, fulfillment, and satisfaction with life. So instead they drink and do drugs.
2. Communism/authoritarianism: people in countries like China and Russia also struggle with addiction and drugs. This is often due to, well, their lives fucking sucking balls. Living under an authoritarian rule (or quasi-authoritarian rule like in Russia) and lack of upward mobility/opportunity makes one depressed, and far too often depressed people turn to drugs. When you are beat down by the system (and this occurs in capitalist countries too) you want an escape. Russia and the US actually are estimated to have fairly similar rates of addiction to opioids and alcohol. The punishment for drug possession or sales may be extremely harsh, but people are often so miserable they choose to do so anyway. I won't expand on this economic structure and further, as I want to move on.
Human nature and social norms: I am speaking of this from a western perspective, so this could be slightly different in other countries. Regardless, social norms and human nature play a HUGE, MASSIVE role in the addiction issues facing modern peoples. The "standard westerner" does all kinds of unhealthy shit: they binge watch netflix; they eat ice cream and candy and french fries, or drink soda or sugary coffee drinks; they drink alcohol socially or smoke cigarettes; they are glued to social media 24 hours per day. All of these things are nursed and habits are formed from a young age.
Look at THIS fucking clip that was on fucking Good Morning America as though it is the cutest thing ever and should be rewarded.
When I saw that clip, I was fucking disgusted. The standard layperson is simply so god damned ignorant, so clueless, so fucking stupid that they don't have a clue what they're doing to that poor, innocent baby. Ice cream is basically just sugar. Sugar is a drug. They gave drugs to this baby. They just lit up that baby's dopamine receptors and entire reward system in its brain like the fucking big thing at burning man. I literally immediately thought to myself "uh oh, here comes another heroin addict!". Now, that might not be true, the baby might be fine, but for whatever reason parents and people think there are no consequences to feeding their children HIGHLY ADDICTIVE shit. They pump them full of sugar and act like that's nothing wrong with it simply because that is the social norm. Big Sugar companies lobby politicians and pay scientists/manipulate research studies to ensure that sugar stays at the forefront of our diets.
When children are introduced to sugar as such a young age, nothing else can compete. We've all seen the kid that "doesn't like vegetables". That kid is also usually shoveling fruit juice (which is just liquid sugar) or pop tarts into their mouth every day. They'll eat a burger or chick-fil-a but they won't eat some cooked broccoli or green beans. We've all seen the obese/morbidly obese child that is the product of its environment--it was introduced to sugar at a very young age, was never checked or had limits on consumption, and now it's got fucking pre-diabetes at 10 years old. Well, sugar loses its ability to get you high pretty quickly--people develop a tolerance to it. Our malleable child-brains become so used to having these massive infusions of sugar that we need more and more to do the trick--often children consume more and more despite weight gain and health issues. This meets the definition of addiction. Well, once that sugar high is unattainable, guess what is next? Once they get to high school they will be introduced to drinking, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, pills, molly, you fucking name it and your local high school probably has someone in it who can get some. Or hell I see kids in middle school starting to guzzle extra large starbucks frappuccinos every day, starting the caffeine addiction far early than they should because those drinks are JUSR
SUGAR is the real gateway drug.
But there is more that I will touch on. Not only are kids given the drug known as sugar at way too young an age, way too often, and in way to large of quantities, but they are also given fucking phones and ipads to shut them up because parents don't wanna fucking parent. They are given apps that are built to be as engaging and addicting as possible. They are given these devices for HOURS while the parents sit around and drink alcohol and talk with their friends. YES, parents need some time away, but IMO if you aren't gonna actually fucking be a parent then you never should have had any fucking kids to begin with!! Don't say you want kids so bad, then the second they get a little rowdy (or go nuts because you gave them fucking ice cream and they're high as fucking hell) you say fuck it and give them a phone to distract them. It is fucking SICKENING and it happens all over the world.
Then as these kids grow up, they throw tantrums and have literal withdrawals if you take the sugar or the phone away.
So parents have played a HUGE role in the addiction crisis and still are. The average parent is raising an addict, even if they don't know it, because they are too damn complacent and ignorant.
Lastly, the medical system: I think this is getting better, but doctors used to introduce kids to vicodin and percocet at very young ages. They'd get their tonsils out or they'd break a bone or something and they'd give them this magical opioid that makes the pain go away and also causes intense euphoria. Parents play a role here too: lock up your kids pain meds and give them to your kid yourself, don't let your kid dose their own pain meds. That was the mistake my parents made (as well as others, lol). The medical system either gives out pain meds too early, they give out too much, or they don't give out enough when someone is older, causing them to look on the street for pain meds to self-treat their own pain. Additionally, you have psychiatrists doling out adderall and ritalin and xanax like it's candy to developing kids or teenagers.
In summary, there are a ton of factors that go into the addiction crisis. Many people just want to blame big pharma. Yes, they played a MASSIVE role and it's proven that they actually purposefully downplayed the addiction aspect of these drugs in the trials and committed nefarious acts to try to maximize the number of patients that would get addicted to these meds in order to maximize profits for the company. Yes, this is horrifying, but PARENTS play a MASSIVE ROLE. Parents just don't wanna fucking parent. All these people sit around thinking how they need to have a baby for whatever reason (societal norms, pressure from their parents or peers, rose-colored glasses view of what it's like to have a baby), but they don't fucking think long term about the childs life and what their lives will truly be like. Chauffeuring your child around every day, spending thousands of dollars on bullshit that they grow out of in 6 months or fads that they lose interest in far too quickly. But most of all, most parents don't even know how to fucking take care of themselves! They are fat, unhealthy, waste their lives away watching bullshit television shows that are so despicable they shouldn't even be on the air, they're psychologically fucked up with problems they've never worked through and don't even try to improve/alleviate, have tons of bad habits they never work to break, and really just don't strive for self improvement or continuous learning at all...and all those awful traits get passed down to their kids. Then they are so baffled when their kid gets into pain pills or becomes a pothead, or they get upset because their kid never wants to go outside when the parent themselves is glued to their phone/the TV and gave the kid an ipad at 3 years old.
Parents need to take responsibility. The system isn't going to change. Capitalism, communism, whatever system you live in is here to stay, and right now in most countries the chances are looking pretty bleak that things will get better. Around the world we are sliding into extremism and further political gridlock. Hell, the "leader of the free world" barely survived an attempted coup by an egomaniac/wannabe-dictator and tens of millions of people still support him!
Ignorance is the leading offender here, but also shitty morals and values. People need to rethink their lives. People need to ask questions and think critically (which unfortunately a lot of people don't because they are discouraged from a very young age by western religion, where asking too many questions is very bad as it points out the blatantly pathetic holes in the christian/jewish/muslim belief systems).
Every single person in the world needs to take their own health into their own hands. Learn to eat healthy, learn to enjoy exercise, get off the fucking phones and social media sites, shift our values to that of the betterment of ALL people and the health of the planet, not just the riches for "me and mine". This is what allowed me to escape my deep, intense addiction. I was living in a homeless shelter. Now I own real estate and work a high paying job in IT and am about to move into my dream home in my early 30s. I am confident I could raise a kid that wouldn't become an addict at this point and would likely be a very confident and awesome child. 10 years ago that wouldn't have been the case at all, I would've raised a piece of shit human that probably would've been addicted to drugs just like I was.
Only once people have helped themselves, then they can start having kids and raising them in a healthy way that will minimize the risk of not only addiction, but literally every other fucking mental health issue in the book!! Only then can we start to see an improvement in society as a whole, and I personally think only then will we see rates of drug use and addiction go down. As to whether this will ever happen or not...personally I don't think so, but I am a pessimist about humanity and a professed strong misanthrope, so don't take my word for it! Each individual taking responsibility and imitative is going to be the only way things could truly change. No law or policy or governmental campaign can every change people's deeply rooted habits and values, it's something everyone needs to do for themselves.
Anyway. That's my brain dump for the day. Enjoy!
First off--and this is really fucking important--society has been inadvertently built to create addicts. That's right, our society fosters addiction and addictive behavior among the general population like an alcoholic nursing a hangover for 30 years straight. This seems to be relatively consistent regardless of what economic system a country maintains (e.g., capitalism vs communism), albeit for very different reasons.
Second, human nature and our social norms constantly reinforce addiction and provide a ridiculously overwhelming number of opportunities for people to become addicts starting at age 0. Parents are big players (or dare I say, offenders) here for the first several years of a child's life, then school and society plays a larger role.
Third, our medical system is HUGELY to blame for addiction, at least definitely in the US.
As far as my assertion on society, I am going to break it down into two sub-types by economic structure.
1. Capitalism: Capitalism plays a massive role in addiction. Now, I am a capitalist myself (I mean, hell, I am a landlord and own a fairly successful small business and work a high paying job in IT). However, capitalism in western society, especially in the US and UK (probably in most of the EU too, I just am not as familiar with their politics) has run completely out of control. People are constantly bombarded with advertisements, new products, planned obsolescence; access to pornography; more and more addictive foods and products/apps, and the lobbying power of the offending companies is such that I see zero chance of this going away anytime soon. There are literally people who play the role of "monetization expert" or "head of monetization" at various companies, and their entire job is to make products as addictive as possible. Basically, our entire society is built around hedonic pleasures.
I don't want to go into too much of the minutia because I will end up writing a 10,000 word essay, but suffice to say that capitalism provides both intense temptation as well as a sense of competition between individuals ("Oh you only have a Honda, I have a BMW!") that people feel constantly pressured to appear rich. Everyone wants to be rich, but usually for the wrong reasons. People constantly want the newest iPhone, the newest car, the most expensive house they can barely afford. We have constant instant gratification simply by going on Amazon or Walmart and ordering something then having it on our doorstep a day or 2 later. Capitalism encourages excess, and excess is a form of addiction. People are addicted to buying new shit, as you get a dopamine rush/reward in your brain when you buy stuff. People are addicted to hoarding money, which explains the wealth gap. Nobody truly deserves a billion dollars and most of the people who have billions of dollars are fairly shitty people. Yes, they worked very hard, they they have a skillset that is rare and hard to replace, and yes, they definitely earned their money because the system is flawed and doesn't tax wealth properly. But they didn't work any harder than the single parent working 3 jobs to be able to pay rent and afford shitty health insurance and feed their kids. Or the person busting their ass 6 or 7 days a week, but still has to choose between going to the dentist or going to the doctor.
Capitalism encourages and reinforces shitty morals and values. It makes people's mindset all about ME ME ME and the things I can buy and how much money I have and how to look rich and snazzy so I can impress strangers when I drive my fancy car around. It's bullshit. It discourages thinking about US as a species, it discourages thinking about the planet and the health of the environment we live in. Well, when people are obsessed with ME ME ME and material possessions, they will be perpetually disappointed and constantly chasing a high they'll never achieve: contentment, fulfillment, and satisfaction with life. So instead they drink and do drugs.
2. Communism/authoritarianism: people in countries like China and Russia also struggle with addiction and drugs. This is often due to, well, their lives fucking sucking balls. Living under an authoritarian rule (or quasi-authoritarian rule like in Russia) and lack of upward mobility/opportunity makes one depressed, and far too often depressed people turn to drugs. When you are beat down by the system (and this occurs in capitalist countries too) you want an escape. Russia and the US actually are estimated to have fairly similar rates of addiction to opioids and alcohol. The punishment for drug possession or sales may be extremely harsh, but people are often so miserable they choose to do so anyway. I won't expand on this economic structure and further, as I want to move on.
Human nature and social norms: I am speaking of this from a western perspective, so this could be slightly different in other countries. Regardless, social norms and human nature play a HUGE, MASSIVE role in the addiction issues facing modern peoples. The "standard westerner" does all kinds of unhealthy shit: they binge watch netflix; they eat ice cream and candy and french fries, or drink soda or sugary coffee drinks; they drink alcohol socially or smoke cigarettes; they are glued to social media 24 hours per day. All of these things are nursed and habits are formed from a young age.
Look at THIS fucking clip that was on fucking Good Morning America as though it is the cutest thing ever and should be rewarded.
When I saw that clip, I was fucking disgusted. The standard layperson is simply so god damned ignorant, so clueless, so fucking stupid that they don't have a clue what they're doing to that poor, innocent baby. Ice cream is basically just sugar. Sugar is a drug. They gave drugs to this baby. They just lit up that baby's dopamine receptors and entire reward system in its brain like the fucking big thing at burning man. I literally immediately thought to myself "uh oh, here comes another heroin addict!". Now, that might not be true, the baby might be fine, but for whatever reason parents and people think there are no consequences to feeding their children HIGHLY ADDICTIVE shit. They pump them full of sugar and act like that's nothing wrong with it simply because that is the social norm. Big Sugar companies lobby politicians and pay scientists/manipulate research studies to ensure that sugar stays at the forefront of our diets.
When children are introduced to sugar as such a young age, nothing else can compete. We've all seen the kid that "doesn't like vegetables". That kid is also usually shoveling fruit juice (which is just liquid sugar) or pop tarts into their mouth every day. They'll eat a burger or chick-fil-a but they won't eat some cooked broccoli or green beans. We've all seen the obese/morbidly obese child that is the product of its environment--it was introduced to sugar at a very young age, was never checked or had limits on consumption, and now it's got fucking pre-diabetes at 10 years old. Well, sugar loses its ability to get you high pretty quickly--people develop a tolerance to it. Our malleable child-brains become so used to having these massive infusions of sugar that we need more and more to do the trick--often children consume more and more despite weight gain and health issues. This meets the definition of addiction. Well, once that sugar high is unattainable, guess what is next? Once they get to high school they will be introduced to drinking, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, pills, molly, you fucking name it and your local high school probably has someone in it who can get some. Or hell I see kids in middle school starting to guzzle extra large starbucks frappuccinos every day, starting the caffeine addiction far early than they should because those drinks are JUSR
SUGAR is the real gateway drug.
But there is more that I will touch on. Not only are kids given the drug known as sugar at way too young an age, way too often, and in way to large of quantities, but they are also given fucking phones and ipads to shut them up because parents don't wanna fucking parent. They are given apps that are built to be as engaging and addicting as possible. They are given these devices for HOURS while the parents sit around and drink alcohol and talk with their friends. YES, parents need some time away, but IMO if you aren't gonna actually fucking be a parent then you never should have had any fucking kids to begin with!! Don't say you want kids so bad, then the second they get a little rowdy (or go nuts because you gave them fucking ice cream and they're high as fucking hell) you say fuck it and give them a phone to distract them. It is fucking SICKENING and it happens all over the world.
Then as these kids grow up, they throw tantrums and have literal withdrawals if you take the sugar or the phone away.
So parents have played a HUGE role in the addiction crisis and still are. The average parent is raising an addict, even if they don't know it, because they are too damn complacent and ignorant.
Lastly, the medical system: I think this is getting better, but doctors used to introduce kids to vicodin and percocet at very young ages. They'd get their tonsils out or they'd break a bone or something and they'd give them this magical opioid that makes the pain go away and also causes intense euphoria. Parents play a role here too: lock up your kids pain meds and give them to your kid yourself, don't let your kid dose their own pain meds. That was the mistake my parents made (as well as others, lol). The medical system either gives out pain meds too early, they give out too much, or they don't give out enough when someone is older, causing them to look on the street for pain meds to self-treat their own pain. Additionally, you have psychiatrists doling out adderall and ritalin and xanax like it's candy to developing kids or teenagers.
In summary, there are a ton of factors that go into the addiction crisis. Many people just want to blame big pharma. Yes, they played a MASSIVE role and it's proven that they actually purposefully downplayed the addiction aspect of these drugs in the trials and committed nefarious acts to try to maximize the number of patients that would get addicted to these meds in order to maximize profits for the company. Yes, this is horrifying, but PARENTS play a MASSIVE ROLE. Parents just don't wanna fucking parent. All these people sit around thinking how they need to have a baby for whatever reason (societal norms, pressure from their parents or peers, rose-colored glasses view of what it's like to have a baby), but they don't fucking think long term about the childs life and what their lives will truly be like. Chauffeuring your child around every day, spending thousands of dollars on bullshit that they grow out of in 6 months or fads that they lose interest in far too quickly. But most of all, most parents don't even know how to fucking take care of themselves! They are fat, unhealthy, waste their lives away watching bullshit television shows that are so despicable they shouldn't even be on the air, they're psychologically fucked up with problems they've never worked through and don't even try to improve/alleviate, have tons of bad habits they never work to break, and really just don't strive for self improvement or continuous learning at all...and all those awful traits get passed down to their kids. Then they are so baffled when their kid gets into pain pills or becomes a pothead, or they get upset because their kid never wants to go outside when the parent themselves is glued to their phone/the TV and gave the kid an ipad at 3 years old.
Parents need to take responsibility. The system isn't going to change. Capitalism, communism, whatever system you live in is here to stay, and right now in most countries the chances are looking pretty bleak that things will get better. Around the world we are sliding into extremism and further political gridlock. Hell, the "leader of the free world" barely survived an attempted coup by an egomaniac/wannabe-dictator and tens of millions of people still support him!
Ignorance is the leading offender here, but also shitty morals and values. People need to rethink their lives. People need to ask questions and think critically (which unfortunately a lot of people don't because they are discouraged from a very young age by western religion, where asking too many questions is very bad as it points out the blatantly pathetic holes in the christian/jewish/muslim belief systems).
Every single person in the world needs to take their own health into their own hands. Learn to eat healthy, learn to enjoy exercise, get off the fucking phones and social media sites, shift our values to that of the betterment of ALL people and the health of the planet, not just the riches for "me and mine". This is what allowed me to escape my deep, intense addiction. I was living in a homeless shelter. Now I own real estate and work a high paying job in IT and am about to move into my dream home in my early 30s. I am confident I could raise a kid that wouldn't become an addict at this point and would likely be a very confident and awesome child. 10 years ago that wouldn't have been the case at all, I would've raised a piece of shit human that probably would've been addicted to drugs just like I was.
Only once people have helped themselves, then they can start having kids and raising them in a healthy way that will minimize the risk of not only addiction, but literally every other fucking mental health issue in the book!! Only then can we start to see an improvement in society as a whole, and I personally think only then will we see rates of drug use and addiction go down. As to whether this will ever happen or not...personally I don't think so, but I am a pessimist about humanity and a professed strong misanthrope, so don't take my word for it! Each individual taking responsibility and imitative is going to be the only way things could truly change. No law or policy or governmental campaign can every change people's deeply rooted habits and values, it's something everyone needs to do for themselves.
Anyway. That's my brain dump for the day. Enjoy!
